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I have almost filled up my Seagate IronWolf 18TB drive in my Asustor AS5304T. Today I got a notification the drive is 95% full. I only store video files on it for Plex and it is not used as the OS drive. My question is, does filling up a NAS or Enterprise grade HDD beyond 90 or 95% over stress them and cause premature failure? I dont run a RAID since I feel that level of complexity is not needed for a simple Plex Media server. Googling this type of question gets a lot of unrelated results for replacing or detecting a failing drive. Do you have any videos related to usage of the total available capacity and failure or performance loss.
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It's great to see your Seagate IronWolf 18TB drive getting some heavy use in your Asustor AS5304T for your Plex setup. Regarding your concern about filling up the drive, while NAS and Enterprise-grade HDDs are robust, running them near full capacity for extended periods can indeed lead to performance issues and potentially increase the risk of premature failure over time. While not running RAID keeps things simple, it's essential to keep an eye on storage usage and consider freeing up space if your drive consistently operates near its limit. Regularly cleaning up your media library and considering a backup strategy can help alleviate stress on the drive and mitigate the risk of data loss. Unfortunately, we don't have specific videos on this topic, but I recommend exploring resources online for more insights into managing storage capacity effectively. With your budget of $200 for a new HDD, you might want to consider investing in a higher-capacity drive to accommodate your growing media collection and future-proof your setup for the next few years.